by Neil Wilkinson | May 9, 2010 | Allotment
Another long day at the allotment. We got there bright and early to find two gifts – a bottle of homemade banana and apricot wine from Chris (thanks Chris!) and Bob had rotavated all of the ground that we had turned over last week (thanks Bob!). This was a huge job giving us lots more usable space and must have taken ages because the soil was rock solid. – the soil looks perfect for planting in now. I tried on a section I had turned over on Saturday and whilst Iwas struggling with the rotavator Pilla was busy feeding and watering the garlic and shallots on plot 97.
We made a quick call in to the stores to buy netting and canes (you can never have enough canes it seems) and also returned with a massive amount of wire fencing, which should easily be enough to cover the full side and the back of our plot. After lunch I used hoops to make the tunnel covering the cauliflowers and red cabbage, while Pilla sowed a couple of rows of swedes. Hopefully this should protect them from attack better than last year as the mesh on this netting is much finer.
Back on plot 97 we planted out our sweetpeas across the front and up the bamboo arch and filled up their place in the cold frame with the runner beans and purple sprouting broccoli. I did some more weeding on plot 118 and Pilla planted out kale (dwarf green curled), savoy cabbages (tarvoy) and sweetcorn (sweet nugget and mini-pop, a mini variety from Bob) in the greenhouse and a few more lettuce varieties out in the plots. We also potted on some of remaining chilli plants.
Our first fruit shouldn’t be too long away now, the strawberry flowers will soon turn to fruit and the red current bushes already have little green berries on-exciting!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 21, 2010 | Allotment
Great day at the allotment today. The sun was out, there were lots of people, and thanks to Eddie coming down we got absolutely tons done. The plan was to move the two trees from plot 97 onto 118 and put up the posts to form the back fence whilst Pilla got on with sowing the years first seeds. We’ now have four types of sweet pea, three types of tomato (tigerella, marmande, vanessa), cauliflower, oregano, broad-beans and scabious all sown in the greenhouse. That reminds me, I need to increase our bench space in the greenhouse soon.
Soon enough the trees were moved (we should have done this a week or two ago as the trees have actually started growing again) and we had the four concrete fence posts in place. We used a dry cement mix the hold these in place, I’m not sure it is as strong as wet mix but it should be fine for an allotment fence. We then got to work sorting out the front fence, this was a bonus job – I had most of the parts but didn’t think we’d get it done today. I borrowed a couple of pieces of wood from Bob, and It’s still not quite done, but we have the rails attached to posts and a working gate – something this plot hasn’t had for a while. The nice looking sign we inherited is proudly in position on the gate.
Elsewhere, Pilla managed to dig over a huge section of the big plot and plant a couple of currant bushes that Debs kindly gave us. The plots are slowly coming back to life, some of the garlic and shallots are beginning to grow, and the raspberries have leaves growing again.
Bring on the summer!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 19, 2010 | Allotment
I’ve been meaning to get this post done all week, but just had one of those weeks. We couldn’t really spend any time at the allotment for a few reasons, one of them being a huge pile of work for Pilla, so it was just me this week. The only jobs I could do/had to do were planting the new raspberry canes and blackcurrant bush. We both love raspberries and the ones we got from the allotment last year were so tasty we’ve decided to double up this year and get some more canes. We’ve gone for a variety that fruit off this years canes (the other ones we have grow on last year’s wood, so you have to chop down this years growth, and separate the new stuff. It’s not a massive pain, but it is more work). The new variety you just chop all the canes down at the end of the year and they all grow back the following spring. This should hopefully mean we get early fruit from one set and late fruit from another – in theory we could have fruit from May until November.
The blackcurrant bush is looking a little sorry for itself – I’m not sure if there was a problem with the delivery but the one we got looked like it had been in the post a while. I’m not hugely convinced it is going to thrive. Elsewhere, I was desperately looking for signs of growth (I know there will be more this week because I had a sneaky mid-week-post-work visit) and found a couple. No signs of growth from the garlic or shallots disappointingly.
I’ve been looking at the pictures from last year and I think we must be at least three weeks behind spring last year.
by Philippa | Aug 31, 2009 | Allotment
Plot 97! Well, partially at least. This weekend brought the annual summer show and with it the hotly contested produce competition. We saw the show last year and it gave us lots of inspiration about what we might be able to enter ourselves this year. But we did not expect to have much produce to choose from so it was a surprise to be able to enter 15 items into the competition. Neil had been constantly telling me in the last few weeks that it was the taking part that counted and that we probably wouldn’t win anything, but the competitive streak in me meant I was desperate to win something, anything!
We are pleased to announce our results as follows: first place for our garlic, second place for our beetroot and runner beans and third place for our shallots, dahlia and my Victoria sponge!
We were really pleased to be taking part let alone winning any prizes so it made our hard work over the past year worthwhile. Out of all the people who won prizes in the competition we came third. Both second and third place were held by members who are in their first year of having a plot so it just goes to show what can be achieved even in the early days with a bit of enthusiasm and a lot of luck! A special mention must go to Bob, as without him I’m sure we would be floundering around not knowing what to do and when, so he definitely deserves some of the credit for our prizes.
We still had some work to do at the plot this weekend, once the victorious glow had mellowed a bit! Having dug up our onions and garlic recently we have quite a bit of empty soil on show. We didn’t really have the opportunity of spending much time improving our soil before we planted things this season due to the lack of time and so we want to remedy that for next year. We added some manure and organic soil improver to the bed that is fully cleared and after digging it through we sowed some green manure seeds. These will add nutrients, prevent leaching and reduce weed growth over winter.
I planted out some of the lettuces that had been in the coldframe and harvested more of the tomatoes that were ripe. It is nice to be planting things out rather than pulling them up as at this time of year you can start to feel nostalgic for the greenery that was bulging out of every bed only a few weeks ago. But there are still enough things growing to last us into the autumn. We have a pumpkin that is getting more swollen by the day; our blackberry bush is sending out branches metres long and the squash are starting to develop.
We cannot help but get excited already about all the things that we will be growing next spring, such is the cycle of being a budding allotmenter. Fingers crossed for more prizes next year!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 19, 2009 | Allotment
Exciting times at the allotment this week – not only did we harvest almost more crops than we could carry, but Pilla got to use her new trug:
As you can see it’s pretty full up. I have to admit that the trug is quite useful – and it looks the part when Pilla is carrying it, I’m just not sure I can pull off the look! The full list of it’s content is:
- Sugar snap peas
- 3 yellow courgettes
- Runner beans
- Dwarf French beans
- Broad beans
- 3 types of lettuce
- 2 cucumbers
- A handful of carrots
- Thyme
- Raspberries
Sunday was exciting for different reasons – there was a lesson from Bob and Walter on how to prepare vegetables for the annual show. The first weekend we spent at the allotments was at the annual show last year (you can see that here) – and we did wonder if we might have produce to show this year. We probably will, but won’t be challenging for a prize (we had a sneaky peak at Debbie’s onions and shallots and they must be about three times the size of ours) and unfortunately Pilla’s appeals for a category of our own for wonky vegetables was rejected!
After the show meeting we braved the rain to rattle through our list of jobs. I added a few more strawberry runners to the first bin I cut holes from last week. We have two of these to fill and thankfully our strawberry plants are going crazy producing runners for us to use. Using these bins will give us an extra half bed for other things next year and we should have lots more strawberries than this year. Pilla was busy digging up our bed of shallots – they had got a bit of a pounding in the heavy rain this week and didn’t look likely to recover and their leaves had been yellowing for a while. We got a pretty good number from them but they are pretty small – they are currently drying out in our spare room.
We also planted out the remaining habenero chillies, melons and some more basil and sowed more of our lettuce varieties. We didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures today – a lot of the time we were hiding out in the greenhouse sheltering from the rain. I did manage to venture to the front border – the dahlia’s that Mike from work gave me are looking great. Back in the greenhouse we are about to have a glut of peppers, we have four plants and each one probably has 10 peppers on it. We also have our first proper chilli growing – finally!
In between rain showers (actually just when the rain got a bit lighter) I planted some green manure in the bed vacated by the shallots and Pilla planted our some more radishes. We were pretty damp at this point so called it day.
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